Replacement grass for FSX and P3D. Beautiful texture with serious drawbacks. Is it worth it? I neither recommend nor advise against it. Decide for yourself.

Może być ładnie – prawda?

HD Grass (use with caution!)

HD Grass – probably no one likes the default FSX (P3D) grass textures – they are blurry and ugly (especially from a close distance). Several developers try to “save” us providing replacement file for grass details. For free.

From these three Drzewiecki’s grass has an advantage of an installer and an additional texture for snow or sand.

The repeating pattern becomes visible

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Cons

I do not like how the texture repeats itself creating a distinctive pattern – you can see it on the screen above.

The other drawback is the effect on snow and sand – if you cover it with grass texture it looks odd. Of course – the color is correct – yellow for sand, white for snow, but they are covered with grass details. Grass blades covered with snow may look good in some situations. Sandy grass blades look bad…

Drzewiecki Design’s grass solves this problem providing additional texture for snow (or sand). You need to reinstall the add-on every time you want to switch from grass to snow texture…

Can lower resolution help with the pattern problem?

Erik Hardenbol’s grass is far better in terms of pattern effect. Unfortunately the texture it uses looks grainy and creates moire effect. For me it’s unpleasant but it may look a bit different in your FSX. You may also be less sensitive for such effects than I am.

What did I choose?

If I had to choose between the freeware grass add-ons – I would kept the default FSX (P3D) grass…

How the default grass looks like (a different shade is caused by different lighting / time of day)

What I actually use? FTX Aero grass by ORBX

FTX Aero is a tool that comes with FTX sceneries. It also includes detail1.bmp file (actually several that user can choose from). It’s not as detailed as Drzewiecki’s or REX’s grass but it has no visible reapeating pattern! For me it’s the best.